Republican strategists said yesterday that Senator Barack Obama's failure to win over blue-collar voters would deliver the White House to Senator John McCain, despite his faltering campaign.

Republican strategists think Barack Obama's campaign has not swayed voters where it matters - in the swing statesPhoto: GETTY IMAGES

By Alex Spillius in Washington

8:15PM BST 25 May 2008

Senior party figures suggested that Mr McCain could even surpass George W Bush's margin of victory in 2004.

They believe that concerns among small town and rural voters about Mr Obama's ethnic background and lack of experience would result in a decisive amount of "split ticket" voting in November's general election.

This would see Democrats vote along party lines for state legislators, Congressmen and governors but opt for the Republican presidential nominee over Mr Obama.

Amid an unpopular war and record low ratings for Mr Bush, the Republican Party is braced for major losses at every level but could yet cling on to the White House.

The quiet but rising confidence of Republican political analysts and demographic number crunchers comes despite alarm about the current state of Mr McCain's campaign, which is seen as lacking focus and direction.

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Karl Rove, Mr Bush's former right-hand man, told Fox News: "John McCain needs a clear image of what he is going to do over the next four years ... he doesn't have that yet."

Other senior Republicans expressed fears that he had failed to exploit the drawn out contest for the Democratic nomination between Mr Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, told Sky News that he expected Democratic super-delegates, who have a casting vote in the race, to make their choice swiftly after the final primaries on June 3, and that Mrs Clinton would then have to drop out.

That would bring the battle between Mr Obama and Mr McCain into sharp focus and the attention shift to the magic number of 270, the majority of electoral college votes needed to win the presidency.

In both 2000 and 2004, Mr Bush won by majorities of just five and 35, due to the winner-takes-all system in states such as Florida and Ohio.

Republican strategists think that all the excitement caused by Mr Obama's campaign for change, which has brought out millions of young voters and revitalised the black electorate, will not be big enough to work where it really matters – in the swing states – where he needs to turn "red" Republican states into "blue" Democrat states.

Chip Felkel, a Republican consultant in South Carolina, which Mr Obama won by a landslide with the help of the black vote, said: "The African American vote makes more states interesting but doesn't really bring them into play. That's probably true for my state, North Carolina and Georgia."

Though Mr Obama leads Mr McCain in national polls, he has lost heavily to Mrs Clinton in primaries in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, marginal states where lack of familiarity, uncertainties about his controversial pastor, his seeming lack of empathy for rural culture and rumours that he was a Muslim all worked against him.

Privately, Democratic strategists concede the validity of the scenario, but stress that Mr Obama has time to overcome voters' doubts, and will be vastly better funded than Mr McCain.